197 Another £70 please

There was a time when Caroline believed that one of her marital duties was to inform me whenever she thought that there was something about my driving that needed correction but whenever she was kind enough to bestow her opinion upon me, the atmosphere in the car would become more than a little tense.  

She always seemed surprised how ungrateful I was for her opinion or advice as I drove and I believe that now; after trying many ways to end it, I have finally got her to stop.  

These days, instead of her saying something, I am occasionally aware of a sharp intake of breath from my left, a muttered expletive, or her adoption of the brace position. 

My driving record was unblemished for 48 years. It was in 2012 when it all changed. I spent one Saturday morning driving around rural Bedfordshire where I collected six driving points in just 20 minutes for twice exceeding the 30 miles per hour speed limit by just five miles an hour in both cases. 

Five months later, I was caught marginally speeding in Milton Keynes and so after driving for more than half a million miles in half a century, I accumulated nine penalty points in 20 weeks.

At the time of writing about that, eight years ago, I was under the impression that it was almost impossible to be penalised for any driving offence in London, where I had lived for the previous 40 years, because the volume of traffic was so high that it was virtually impossible to offend without intending to do so.

Things have changed in 10 years.  How they have changed!

Caroline and I went to the theatre in London three weeks ago and what we saw was dreadful.  The cast was just one actress who was on a stage with no props other than a table that had an envelope and two glasses of water on it.  The envelope contained a script and the first time the actress saw the script was when she opened the envelope on stage.

It became obvious very quickly that the script made even less sense to her than it did to me.  Thankfully, it was all over in an hour and then we had a nice meal in a good restaurant before driving the 55 miles home.

To my horror, the ordeal had not ended.  It had just begun.  Five days later, I received a letter from the Metropolitan Police informing me that I had driven in a bus lane.  There was an accompanying photograph as proof.  I was certainly in the wrong but the fact that the bus lane was completely empty and I was only in it as I intended to turn left in 40 yards, was ignored.  I was not causing a problem, inconvenience or danger to anyone.  £60 please.

Two days after that, I had another letter from the police telling me that six minutes after encroaching on the bus lane, I had gone through a traffic light while it was amber.  Had I?  I don’t think so but how can I prove that I didn’t.  Another £70 please.

This morning, my new friends, whom I hadn’t heard from for two weeks, wrote to me again.  Somewhere on the Holloway Road, which is in a 20 mph zone, I had been detected travelling at 24 mph and consequently, they would like £100, if I would be so kind.  

I certainly was not doing 24.  As soon as I entered the 20mph zone, I set the speed limiter to 20 and so that means that either the police’s monitoring device is faulty or KIA’s limiter doesn’t work as it should.

For 40 years, from 1972 to 2012, I drove in London every day and never committed any driving offence but in 90 minutes on November 9th, 2024, I breached regulations three times at a cost of £230.

But that’s not all.  On November 21st, I went to London to visit a friend who was in a hospital I’ve never driven to before.  I am a Blue Badge holder and so I park in bays for disabled drivers where there is no charge.  There seemed to be 30 or more such bays but they were all occupied.  I parked in a standard bay and displayed my badge.

Guess what?  Yes, you’re right.  I have been fined £70 for not paying the parking fee.

I’m not sure that I believe her but after the speeding letter arrived, Caroline claimed that she knew every time I was at fault when I drove back from the theatre. She also declared that there were two other times I was in the wrong on that journey but as requested, she had kept silent.

You may think that I don’t deserve any sympathy for the fines and got what I deserved.  That’s fair enough but my point is not that I have been hard done by but that London never used to be like this.  

So, there are now two reasons why I’d never move back to live in London. The cost of housing and the costs of safe driving.

57. Signs of the times

London’s roads are full of traffic lights.  It is virtually impossible to drive more than 400 yards without passing through or stopping at a set of lights.  In Cayman there are only three sets of lights in the entire country.   

Last Saturday morning, at the junction of Friern Barnet Road (A1003) and Station Road (A 109), New Southgate, the lights were not working.  These are two busy major roads and there is always a long delay getting through the junction. 

The most annoying reason for a hold up at traffic lights is the driver who is a “Late Indicator”.  This is a person who drives into the right-hand lane when it may be used by traffic going straight ahead or turning right, without using an indicator or turn signal.  

Following him, I assume that as there is no indicator showing, he will be going straight on.  Then, just after the light goes green, he turns on the indicator to show that he will be turning right after all.  I sit there fuming as all the traffic on my left, in the inside lane, flows past me.  I’d shoot the stupid bastard!

On Saturday morning, even although the traffic was heavy, there was no delay at this junction.  And the reason?  The traffic lights were not working.  They were out of service.  They were bust!

Hooray!  And yet there was no chaos; pandemonium did not ensue because drivers approached the junction, slowed down, looked all around, waited for a gap, and then went through.  Priority was instinctively given to any vehicle already making the manoeuvre.  It was beautiful and a joy both to watch and to be part of.  When we returned four hours later, the lights were still out and the traffic was still flowing freely.

In almost all cases, traffic lights cause more problems than they solve.  On Saturday, as I drove into central London, I kept an eye out at all controlled junctions and at all of them (except perhaps for the junction of Baker Street and Marylebone Road) I am sure that traffic flow would be more efficient without them.

The reason is obvious.  Next time you are in a position to do so, try and work out how much time passes while traffic on all approaches is stationary.  At the junction of Friern Barnet Road and Station Road in north London, it is nine seconds in every full sequence.  That is around two hours a day when nothing is moving (except pedestrians of course but they don’t count).

As a first step toward improving things, I would propose that we adopt the system they use in the States.  There, where of course they drive on the right, at most junctions you are allowed to turn right when the light is red as long as it is safe to do so.  If a comparable idea were in operation here, there would be a much freer movement of traffic at traffic lights as we would be able to filter left on red.  It could be introduced immediately and at no cost. 

That isn’t going to happen but I would love to see the results of an experiment of shutting down all the lights outside the congestion zone in London and seeing what happens.  Traffic Lights are the reason that traffic in London today flows no faster than that of Victorian times.  The Victorians didn’t really have traffic lights and those that they did have were hand operated which meant that the operator could use his judgement on which colour to show and for how long.

This clip shows you why all traffic lights are unnecessary.  Let’s just get rid of them all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n_mgFA47WQ 

While I’m on the subject of street furniture (love that term), what do you make of this sign?

Falling or fallen rocks

The last time I saw this sign was when I was driving in The Lake District.  I was on a narrow winding road with a precipitous drop of 150 feet, five feet to my left.  

What are you expected to do when seeing this warning?  Take your eyes off the road and look upwards for rocks falling down on to you and so run the high risk of plunging off the road as it makes a sharp turn?  

Or maybe you should just forget about the possibility of death by crushing, and look at the road ahead so as to avoid the rocks that may have already fallen?  

But looking at the road ahead is what I do anyway when I have a gaping void within spitting distance of me.  What a stupid pointless sign.

Mention of pointless road signs brings me to this one:

CAUTION  Low flying aircraft

What are you expected to do when given this warning?  Take your eyes off the road ahead and look up for low flying aircraft?  And if you do see one, what are you expected to do then?  Stop the car, get out and wave perhaps?  What a stupid pointless sign.

Here’s a good one:  Knowing that all terrorists are misguided but basically law-abiding citizens, you may expect to see this sign in busy city centres soon:

No vehicles carrying explosives or flammable materials 

This sign irritates me because the action that it depicts is impossible.  There is no way, no matter how slippery the road is, that these tyre tracks could ever be produced.

Slippery road

There is one road sign that will always be my favourite.  Just as some people have “Our tune” and every time they hear it they look at each other and say’ “Aaah,” Caroline and I have “Our sign” and this is it

HAZCHEM

Just after we arrived in Cayman, we were driving along South Sound Road and we were passing the oil storage depot.  “Look at that,” said Caroline, pointing at the sign.  “Why do they have signs here that are in German?”  She was 37 at the time with Grade As at ‘O’ level in Latin and French and degrees from Birmingham and Cambridge Universities.

This next sign was said to have existed 30 years ago on a track across the Pennine moorland.  I am not sure that it ever really was there, but I’d like to think that it was:

IT IS AN OFFENCE TO THROW STONES AT THIS NOTICE

And this one is truly wonderful:

CAUTION this sign has sharp edges

55. Bloody Islington!

£7.40 for 2 hours parking on the street in Islington... Outrageous!

That was what was posted on Facebook on Tuesday and it doesn’t surprise me at all. Bloody Islington!  It was posted by Alex, whose wedding with (to)? Lucie, Caroline and I went to in December.  Well done you two.  And to think that some people said it wouldn’t last!

You may remember that I wrote about life in Islington last summer when we were living there for five weeks in Caroline’s sister’s house while ours was being refurbished.

Parking in Islington is an absolute nightmare.  We ran up more than £300 in parking fines in those five weeks.  Bloody Islington!  I appealed two and lost.  A third is still under review. 

As an Islington resident, Joanna has a resident’s parking permit that goes with the car. Joanna and her family were away in France and she gave us the use of her car and the use of her resident’s permit.

There is a parking bay with a meter right outside Joanna’s house.  I was unsure whether or not I could park in the bay without paying while displaying a voucher.  As I was getting into her car one morning, a traffic warden was passing.  I showed him the voucher.

“May I use this to park in the metered bay?” I asked him.

He studied the voucher and assured me that I could.  Later the same day I received a £60 parking ticket for parking in that bay and not “paying and displaying”.

I appealed, quoting the warden’s name and number and advice given but my appeal was turned down on the grounds that the information I had been given was incorrect and a different warden had issued the notice legally.

These vouchers only had to be displayed between 8:30 in the morning and 6:30 in the evening.  One morning I woke up, looked at the clock and saw that it was 8:35.  I ‘leapt’ out of bed, got dressed descended two flights of stairs and hobbled as fast as I could (which is about half normal walking speed) to where my car, that I had used instead of Joanna’s the previous day, was parked around two hundred yards away.  I was in time.  I had not been ticketed.

The vouchers were for one hour at a time.  The start time had to be scratched off and the card displayed.  In my rush to get dressed, I had not put my watch on and so I estimated and scratched 8:50, locked the car and went back for breakfast. 

Fifty minutes later I returned to find I had a ticket.  £60!  The ticket was timed at 8:48.  I had been fined for being a bad judge of the passage of time or I suppose, for walking faster than I thought I had or maybe, just for parking in bloody Islington.

The appeal was dismissed for the same reason as the first: the warden had issued the ticket legally.

The third ticket, the one that is still under appeal, was an outrageous injustice, (in my opinion m’lud).  .

One afternoon I parked Joanna’s car in a nearby street.  I displayed a 24-hour parking permit and didn’t use it again that day.  When I went to drive off the following morning I discovered that the car had been moved across the road.

I am officially classed as disabled.  I have a blue badge issued by Enfield Council that allows me many parking concessions.  I never walk further than I have to. I parked as far down Garnault Place and as close to Joanna’s home in Rosoman Place as I could to make the walk to her house as short as possible. I parked some 15 to 20 feet beyond a lamppost.  That, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, is important.

I put a 24-hour parking-scratch-card on the dashboard, got out of the car, locked it and set off along the pavement.  I did not turn round to look at the lamppost (Why would I?) and even if I had done so, I would not have walked (painfully) out of my way to read an A4-sized notice hung upon it.   I would have assumed that it would have had information of interest to Islington residents only such as clearing up after dogs fouling the footpath or to watch out for uneven paving slabs.

The following morning at 11:30 I found that the car had been moved to the other side of the road and the windscreen was plastered with notices.

The notices told me that I had parked in a restricted area as road works were due to start there at 8:00 am that morning.

At 11:30 there no was work being done in the road nor was there any sign of any workmen or equipment.  However, the area where my car had been parked was now cordoned off.

I do not think that I should have to pay this fine, as the warning sign was neither obvious nor large.  I’m not even sure that it was hanging from that lamppost the previous afternoon.

Islington will not communicate with me as I am not the registered keeper of the car and Joanna is not keen on communicating with them as she was out of the country at the time.

Her first appeal has been rejected for the usual reason but I am urging her to go for a hearing at a Parking Tribunal.  Islington has to be stopped.  Bloody Islington!